


Cap the Collie

by DestinyWolfe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint and Nat are married and own a vet clinic, Cute, Dogs, Domestic, Established Relationship, Kissing, Love, M/M, No Smut, One Shot, One-Shot, Slash, Stucky - Freeform, and Bucky helps out sometimes when they're on their various honeymoons, and it's kind of an accident, bucky and a puppy, but they love it anyway, just cute kissing, puppy, steve and a puppy, steve and bucky get a dog, stevebucky - Freeform, stuck one-shot, what more could you want in life?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7586497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestinyWolfe/pseuds/DestinyWolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years have passed since the superhero Civil War. </p><p>In that time, alliances have been reforged, and old grievances forgiven. Steve and Bucky are now living together in an apartment in Brooklyn, enjoying life, and (occasionally) saving the world. Natasha and Clint are married, and have started a veterinary clinic a few miles from Steve and Bucky's apartment. Bucky likes to help out when Nat and Clint are busy (or on one of the many, many "honeymoons") and happens to be staying late at the clinic one night when a couple of stranger dump off an unwashed, injured, underfed collie puppy at the clinic's door.</p><p>Basically, Bucky accidentally gets a collie puppy, and domestic Steve/Bucky fluff and cuteness ensues. A one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cap the Collie

"I thought I told you I didn't want a pet! This is all your fault, Harold." 

"Look at the damn thing, Krista, it's bleeding all over! We have to take it in, I don't care how much it costs." 

Bucky looked up from the lab sheet in front of him, frowning, as raised voices drifted through the open door of the vet clinic. _What the hell?_ It was almost four in the morning—way too damn late (or early, depending on who you were) for anyone in their right mind to be passing by on the street—and Bucky had just been getting ready to go back to his and Steve's apartment for a much-needed sleep. _Fuck my life,_ he thought, and scrubbed one hand across his face, sighing exhaustedly. Of course, if someone's pet was going to need emergency surgery at four in the morning, it was going to happen on Bucky's watch. And when the actual pet doctors—Nat and Clint--were away, nonetheless. 

The voices outside were lower now, more controlled. 

But the words were no less venomous. 

"Just throw it in the trash can," the woman—Krista—hissed. "I don't want to deal with this right now. Or ever, for that matter! Just throw it away." 

The man made a wounded sound, like an injured animal. "Babe, we can't! It'll die, the poor thing." 

"Drop it on the doorstep and ring the bell, then," the woman said, her voice now a desperate whisper. "We have a plane to catch in an hour, Harold, and I am _not_ going to let some little scrap of fur make me late to my daughter's wedding! If someone's still inside this goddamn clinic, they'll hear the bell and take it, and then it's not our problem anymore. Just drop it, and let's walk away. Now!" 

The man sighed. Bucky could hear the weariness in his breath, and imagined him hunching his shoulders and hanging his head, finally defeated. "Alright, alright. I'll leave it here." 

Bucky hesitated for a long moment, listening, waiting. _DING!_ The bell that signaled when someone had entered the clinic rang once, shrill and piercing in the otherwise quiet hours just before dawn. 

"Go," the woman muttered. "Run." The command was followed by the sound of hurried footsteps clicking away down the street. 

Slowly, cautiously, Bucky emerged from the lab, where he had been going over some blood test results for a feline patient of Natasha's, preparing a write-up to give to her when she returned from hers and Clint's latest honeymoon (which was really just another excuse for them to run away to Hawaii, Bucky thought. Or to go gallivanting around Rome reenacting scenes from _Angels and Demons_ and _Spectre_ , or whatever the hell they were into these days. Bucky wasn't sure which was more likely, but both were very real possibilities, given his knowledge of Clint and Nat's romantic life.) 

Bucky reached the clinic's front door, which was wide open, and peered outside. He looked up and down the street, left than right, but couldn't see any sign of the couple who had he'd heard speaking. _They must have moved fast,_ he thought. _Wanted to get out of here before they had to explain themselves. Bastards._

And then he looked down. On the doorstep, huddled on the "wipe your paws!" mat that Nat had insisted on buying when she and Clint had first purchased the clinic (and seriously, who was going to argue with Natasha _fucking_ Romanov, anyway? Nobody, that's who) was a tiny, shivering collie puppy about the size of Bucky's two hands. It was bleeding from its flank, but the damage didn't look as bad as the arguing couple had made it out to be. The pup would only need a few stitches, and some proper meals, Bucky assessed, and it would be good as new. 

"Hi," he said gently, bending at the knees. He crouched, holding out one hand to the tiny dog. The dog lifted its head, yawned widely, and licked the outstretched tips of Bucky's metal fingers. Bucky smiled, and used his other hand to scoop the little pup up, cradling it carefully as he stood up and made his way back into the surgery room. 

It took him an hour to clean the little guy up (and it _was_ a guy, that was the first thing he checked; after all, he was going to need to give it a name eventually) and bandage the pup's wounds. Once the puppy was stable, warm, and moderately content, the next step was to take it back to a place that didn't smell overwhelmingly of other animals, and medical supplies. 

During the ride back to Steve and Bucky's apartment in Brooklyn (almost twenty minutes from Nat and Clint's clinic) the collie pup lay quietly on the padded seat of the passenger chair in Bucky's car, sound asleep. But when Bucky opened the door to the car and tried to pick the pup up again, the exuberant ball of fur jumped immediately into action, pawing at Bucky's jacket, nipping his fingers, and generally making a complete nuisance of himself. 

Not that Bucky cared. He found it incredibly endearing, actually, when the puppy tried to bite his left wrist and found the limb to be much more solid than originally expected. "That's the robot one," Bucky told the dog as he climbed the steps to the second floor of the apartment building where he and Steve had settled down once their names had been cleared (courtesy of some Expert Illegal Spy Work™ on the part of a couple of very dubiously moral, but well-meaning, individuals.) “You can’t bite that one. You’ll break your teeth.” 

The puppy barked. Well, _tried_ to bark, would be more accurate: It was more of a sharp squeak, which may or may not have been among the cutest things Bucky had ever heard in his life (the only reason it was not _THE_ cutest thing was because Steve Rogers sometimes sang along to Disney songs when the Avengers had movie nights at Stark Tower, and nothing in the world would ever beat that for cuteness, in Bucky's not-so-humble opinion.) 

Bucky got out his key, still cradling the collie pup in his other arm, and opened the apartment door. He sneaked inside, doing his best to be absolutely silent (something that he was incredibly good at, given his history as the Worlds Greatest Murder Machine™) but forgot that he had arranged all of his and Steve's gear along the hallway leading to the bedroom before leaving to take over the clinic for Nat the day before. 

_CRASH!_

"God fucking damn it!" Bucky swore, louder than he'd meant to, as his newly bare foot collided with the sharp rim of Steve's shield. The shield itself slid to the ground, slamming down with the star facing up on the brutally unforgiving hardwood floorboards. 

Not only had that almost definitely woken Steve up, but it had probably also woken up every single person in Brooklyn, Bucky thought. He cringed, taking a long, slow, deep breath through his nose to calm himself. 

And then, inevitably, the puppy began to bark. _Yik! Yik! Yik!_

"Shhhhh!" Bucky said, rocking the little dog like he would a human baby. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to do much in the dog's case, except maybe make him more excited than he already was. Bucky tried again, shushing the little pup in as many languages as he knew the word for "no" in (which came to an impressive count of several dozen, it turned out) but nothing he said or did would quiet the little pup even a little. 

"Buck?" Steve's voice, gravelly from recent sleep, sounded at the end of the hall. 

_Well, fuck._ The game was up, then. There went Bucky's last chance of getting any sleep at all before the sunrise. 

"Buck, is that a dog?" Steve flicked on the hall light. He was in his nightclothes, Bucky realized: A too-tight white t-shirt (courtesy of Bucky's last shopping trip with Nat and Sharon) and boxer shorts. 

"Hey, Stevie." Bucky ran the hand not holding the puppy through his hair, and sighed resignedly. "Yeah, it is. Some assholes dumped him off on the clinic's doorstep about half an hour ago." 

Steve approached. He held out his hands, and Bucky carefully handed the little dog off to his boyfriend. "What's his name?" Steve asked, looking down at the wriggling ball of excitement with a huge grin on his handsome face. 

Bucky shrugged. "Couldn't think of anything that worked. Tried a couple'a things out on the way here, but..." he spread his hands in a 'nothing' gesture. "Anyway, I'm beat. If I don't sleep sometime soon, I'm gonna keel over." An exaggeration, but one that Bucky felt was very warranted, given the situation. 

"Yeah, okay." Steve knelt down, and set the puppy down gently on the hallway floor. "How old do you think he is?" he asked, and Bucky got the distinct feeling that Steve hadn't actually heard what he'd just said. All of the blonde's attention seemed to be on the dog. 

"I dunno," Bucky said. "Two month, maybe three. He's underfed, though, so he looks a lot younger than he is, I think." Bucky had discovered this fact during his physical check-up on the pup, back at the clinic. Ever since he'd started helping Nat and Clint out with their veterinary business (something they'd put a lot of time and effort into getting up and running, including hours of late-night online-college-medical-course-cramming) Bucky had been picking up the tricks and tips of the trade. His innate love of strays (especially the small, feisty, overconfident and adorable variety) had led him to help out at the local animal shelter as well as at the clinic, which had further added to his ability to assess an animal's age, health, and personality (the last of which was the hardest, especially when it came to some of the cats that Bucky worked with at the shelter) at a single glance. 

"Poor guy," Steve said. "There're some sausages left in the fridge. You think he can have sausages?" 

At that moment, before Bucky could reply, the puppy darted away from Steve's hovering hands, and disappeared beneath the tipped-over shield. "Whoa," said Bucky, moving forward to lift the circle of red white and blue off of the little pup. "Careful of that. It's sharp." 

Steve begun to laugh as Bucky lifted the shield up. The pup wasn't under it, Bucky thought for one moment of surprise, but then... 

"He's holding on to the straps." Steve was still chuckling as he pointed out the tiny collie, who was growling ferociously as he clung by his teeth to the leather arm straps on the back of the shield. 

"Okay, that's it." Bucky was starting to get grumpy. Beyond the hallway, he could see the first light of dawn breaking through the cracks in the curtained windows of the kitchen. He'd been awake for over two full days now, he was sure of it. "I'm naming him Cap, and there's nothing you can do about it." 

"Buck," Steve began to complain, "that'll get confusing!" 

"Hold the fucking phone," Bucky cut over him. "Are you telling me that my boyfriend is too much of a dumb-ass to know if someone's addressing him, or a puppy?" 

Steve sighed. A very small, adorable smile turned the corners of his mouth up. "Okay, alright, Buck. If that's what you wanna call him, we can call him Cap." 

"Damn right, it is." Bucky reached down, and tried to pull the puppy off of the shield. Cap the collie wouldn't budge, and there was no way he was going to risk hurting his new pet, so, with a heavy, exasperated sigh, Bucky flipped the shield over and settled it back on the ground, this time with the concave side facing up. "Fine, sleep there, if you want," he told the pup. "I'm goin' to my own soft, comfortable bed." 

"I'll join you in a sec," Steve promised, as Bucky straightened up and walked past him. "I'm gonna get little Cap here some food, and blankets. Wait up for me?" 

"Hah!" said Bucky, and rolled his eyes in a very non-subtle manner, just to make sure Steve knew how not impressed he was by that particular use of sarcasm. "You wish, Rogers." 

Steve's laugh was the last thing Bucky heard before stumbling into the bedroom, and passing out in three seconds flat on the wonderfully, perfectly, invitingly warm softness of his and Steve's king mattress. 

The next morning, Bucky woke up to find not the usual one, but _two_ , absolutely, unfairly adorable creatures in his bed: Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America himself (a common, but still strikingly gorgeous and heart-meltingly perfect sight in Bucky's opinion) and Cap the collie, the newest—and arguably the most inevitable—addition to the Avengers family. _After all,_ Bucky thought as he watched Steve's chest rise and fall, with the little collie curled up just over his heart, _We were going to get a dog anyway. It was only a matter of time._

Bucky got up first—of course, he was always up first, these days—and started making eggs and bacon (a _SHIT-TON_ of bacon. Between his and Steve's super-human metabolisms, and now with the addition of a third mouth to feed, and the ever-present possibility that Sam Wilson would stop by during his morning run, there was no such thing as "too much" bacon in their apartment. Ever.) 

"'Morning," Steve said, stumbling into the kitchen, yawning widely. He took a chair at their little dinning room table, ruffling his already messy blonde hair as he reached for the cup of coffee Bucky had set out for him. "Thanks for cooking." 

"Anything for my best guy," Bucky said, taking the seat across from Steve and setting down two plates of eggs and bacon. "Where's Cap?" 

Steve looked up, his brow creasing with momentary confusion, and then sighed. "See, told you that would get confusing," he said. "He's back in the shield. I think he feels safe in it." 

Bucky laughed. "You and him both," he said. "If that's his bed now, are you gonna have to beg Stark to make you a new one?" 

Steve grimaced. He and Bucky had long since repaired most of the rift between them and Tony Stark, but there was still a tension in Cap and Iron Man's relationship that hadn't been there before the superhuman Civil War. "Yeah, guess so," Steve said, and smiled that small, darkly amused smile of his. 

After they'd eaten, Bucky went to check on little Cap. The puppy was fast asleep inside the shield, curled up amidst a heaping pile of blankets and small pillows (most likely meant to be decorative, but this was a far better use for them, Bucky thought.) Bucky knelt down, and ran the tips of his fingers down the pup's back, stroking Cap's soft fur. "'Night, boy," he said, even though it was now nearing noon. In his sleep, the little collie yawned widely, and made a long, thoroughly content sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whine. 

Bucky made his way back to the dining room and kitchen. Steve had finished eating, and had set the plates to the side of the sink. Bucky fought the urge to roll his eyes—Steve was always leaving plates in the sink, the absent-minded bastard—and made for the sink to clean them himself. 

"Buck." Bucky turned around, and saw that Steve had sprawled out on the couch with his phone held up over his face. "Come look at this. I found a website that's all about how to raise a collie puppy. Isn't the internet amazing?" 

"Yeah," Bucky said. He glanced back at the dishes, and thought, _they can wait._ There were more important things right now. 

Bucky reached the couch, and, finding that there was nowhere for him to sit (since Steve was taking up the _entire couch_ with his impressively large, Dorito-esque body) he laid down on top of Steve, rolling over so that he was lying with his back against the back of the couch, and his stomach pressed against Steve's right side. "Show me," he demanded of his boyfriend, nestling in and resting his forehead against Steve's temple. 

Steve made a low, happy sound, not incredibly unlike that that Cap the collie had made when Bucky pet him. "Here," Steve said, and held his phone up so that both of them could see. "It says that we should..." And he launched into a monologue about proper pet care and ownership. 

But Bucky was no longer listening, after the first few sentences. He was watching Steve's mouth, listening to the way that Steve's words thundered through his chest, but he wasn't hearing the words themselves. 

"Rogers," he said, when Steve finally paused for breath. "Can we figure this out later? I've got something else to deal with first." 

Steve paused, and turned his head to stare at Bucky with mild concern. "What is it?" he asked. 

"This," Bucky said, and leaned in to kiss Steve hard on the mouth. Steve reciprocated immediately, and a shock of pure electric attraction raced between them. Bucky pulled back for a moment, taking in the flush creeping up Steve's neck, and the widening of those beautiful, familiar blue eyes. "See? The pet website thing can wait, huh?" 

"Yeah," Steve agreed vehemently, "definitely." He reached up, cupping one hand around the back of Bucky's head, and pulled him down for another deep, searching kiss. 

_Yip! Yip, yip, yip!_

Bucky groaned as little Cap's bark sounded from the other side of the couch. "He found us," he whispered to Steve, who grinned and shifted aside to let Bucky roll off the couch. "He's probably wondering why we already ate, and he didn't. I'll be right back." 

Bucky walked back into the kitchen. He located the plastic plate holding the last of the eggs and bacon, and slid it onto the floor. "There," he told Cap, who wagged his tail and scrabbled his little paws on the tiled floor in his excitement. "Have at it." Cap launched himself forward as soon as the plate touched the floor. But before he started eating, he looked up at Bucky, licked his hand, and wagged his tail. "Good boy," Bucky said, straightening up to his full height. "Good dog." 

He moved back to the couch, and resettled himself, this time on top of Steve, with their chests pressed together. "Okay, now that that’s dealt with.” He grinned as he leaned in, and let his lips melt against Steve's. “Where were we?”


End file.
